


Practicing French

by annaincognita



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 21:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1485274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annaincognita/pseuds/annaincognita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott blinked slowly at Stiles before he dazedly crawled back onto the bed. No, he thought, it’s really not that weird to want a first kiss with someone he felt safe with. Especially when he knew he’d never care about anyone in quite the way that he cared about Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practicing French

“Just tilt your head a little to the right. No, _your_ right. C’mon, Scotty, work with me here.” Stiles leaned forward on the bed and made a reflexive motion to grab at Scott’s face to tilt it to his exact specifications. He reached for Scott's chin just as Scott jerked back a little too hard and teetered right over the edge, landing with a thump on the hardwood floor. “Dude. What is wrong with you?”

“Ugh. Yeah, don’t worry or anything, I’m fine,” Scott muttered through a groan. He looked up to see Stiles peering at him over the edge of the bed, eyebrows quirked so his forehead wrinkled in the middle. Scott stayed sprawled across his floorboards, wondering what exactly he’d done to incite this course of events.

They’d spent the afternoon as usual: Scott’s mom had left to run errands at some point prior to her evening shift at the hospital, and Stiles had immediately rushed over to the almost-empty house on his dilapidated old Schwinn with a backpack stuffed full to the brim with loose school papers, textbooks, click pens, and twizzlers. They’d started their group project for school, sort of, before moving on to setting up the Wii to the living room television as a reward for all their “progress.” Scott’s Kirby had been punching Stiles’ Yoshi toward the edge of the battlefield with no resistance for a full fifteen seconds before he realized that Stiles had gone stock still next to him, head turned in a calculating stare. He’d made the mistake of asking, _dude, what?_ prompting Stiles to set about twitching all over his side of the couch and making big, confused eyes at him. Complete with awkward hand gestures, he ended up propositioning him with a line like, “we should totally make out a little,” which seemed to tumble out of his mouth before he’d been able to think about what he was really asking. He’d winced, Scott stared. Scott knew they were close for friends, but they probably weren’t _that_ close. Not, like, _faces_ close. And with eight years of friendship under their belts, this kind of conversation was just a little bit awkward. Scott would still blush at the memory of accidentally touching Stiles' junk when they rough-housed in his backyard. Intentionally putting his mouth on Stiles' seemed just a little embarrassing.

Scott had tried for a few minutes to resist the proposal for a new way of spending their afternoon, but then he had always had a track record of never being able to willingly disappoint Stiles. He figured they could talk it out a little more beyond the _let’s get our mack on_ and _are you on crack_ conversation they’d started off with. He tried to entertain the notion of them kissing out loud first and process what it could mean for the two of them as friends, but then Stiles had rushed forward and just gone for it.

From his position on the floor, he watched as Stiles rolled his brown eyes at him, and huffed out an unamused breath. Then he muttered, “of course you’re fine. You fell, like, two feet. Now get back up here.”

He tensed against the floor and scrunched his eyes shut, unconsciously letting out a pathetic noise of indecision. “This is weird, Stiles! This is weird and then we’re gonna be weird about it later, and you said you wanted to finish that project for Earth Science today. We’re not gonna wanna work on it if we’re too busy being _weird_ about _things_. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Scott propped himself up so he was leaning the weight of his upper body up onto his elbows and forearms. He felt a little internal strain at his own hesitation to kiss when given the opportunity, but this was _Stiles_. He aimed a puffed breath of air out towards the shaggy black of his bangs, and shot Stiles his best apologetic look.

“Scott, man, c’mon, it’s just a kiss. It’s not even a thing. You love me, don’t you?”

And, of course, like a Pavlovian response, Scott felt his everything relax at that. His lips tugged up at one corner of his mouth in the way it always did when he felt confident about an answer to something, and he made sure Stiles was looking directly at him when he replied with an emphatic, “you know I do.”

Stiles grinned then, slapping a hand to his chest and fluttering his ridiculous eyelashes. “That’s sweet, Scotty, I could stand to hear that a little more often, y’know, a girl could start to feel a little neglected and underappreciated—”

“ _Stiles_.”

Sobered, he replied with a quiet, “I love you too, Scott.” Then he straightened up and angled his shoulders back. “So. Lay one on me.”

The awkwardness rushed back into the lines of his body, tensing up his shoulders. Loving Stiles the way he did just made him the main target of Stiles' scrutiny. He always did like to push limits and test boundaries, everyone's, and especially Scott's. “Couldn’t we just hold hands for a little while first or something? Like a warm up.”

“No. I’m not giving you time to overthink this and chicken out. Plus, nothing about that is new, you’ve totally held hands before, with Becca and Jenn, remember? And I held hands with Casey that one time. _Awkward_. Not to mention all the times _we’ve_ held hands—all very special to me, buddy. But been there, done that, am I right? The point of this is to lose our kissing virginities, together, not to rub our sweaty hands all up on each other.”

“Okay, first of all, that’s gross. Second of all, those times weren’t for _feelings_ or whatever. Becca got stung by a bee that day, and Jaime’s dog got put down. Third of all, don’t say ‘kissing virginities,’ that’s not even a thing.”

“You’re missing the point! This isn’t about ‘feelings or whatever,’” he mimicked sardonically. Scott rolled his eyes at Stiles' attempt at matching the slight crack in voice at the word 'feelings.' He rolled his eyes right back. “Seriously, though. Don’t you wanna be a good kisser by the time you get a real girlfriend?”

Scott paused.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now pucker on up, Romeo. Let’s see what you got.”

“Can’t we just ask some other friends though? Ones we’re less close with? I could ask Amy, probably.”

“She’d sooner kick you in the crotch.”

Scott shuffled up further into a seated position, slightly hunched over his own knees. “Yeah probably, but we wouldn’t be weird about it after.”

“Hey, what is up with your obsession with what happens after? We’re probably gonna pop in some mint mojito, pretend to work on our project for a few more minutes, and then go back to playing Super Smash Bros.; it’s really not worth freaking out over or anything. You might even share some of your super secret stash of sock-drawer-Cheetos with me—totally gross placement by the way—because you love me, and then we’ll say goodnight later and I’ll go home.” He shrugged as he finished, and looked down at the bedspread to deliberately pick at a loose thread. He took an audible breath and exhaled with a heavy sigh through his nose. “It’s not that weird to want your first kiss to be with someone you feel safe with.”

Scott blinked slowly at Stiles before he dazedly crawled back onto the bed. No, he thought, it’s really not that weird to want a first kiss with someone he felt safe with. Especially when he knew he’d never care about anyone in quite the same way that he cared about Stiles.

Stiles looked at him surprised for a moment before he gifted him with a small smile. They shuffled around until they faced each other, sitting with their legs tucked underneath themselves and their knees touching. Scott brushed his fingertips against the worn denim of Stiles’ jeans. There was a fraying hole near the edge of his pinky. “How do you know about my secret stash of cheetos?”

Stiles looked calm, reached out with his own fingers, met Scott’s and held on to them loosely. “I was actually looking for your secret stash of skittles the other day. Already planned a second recon mission for those, don’t worry.”

Scott smiled down at their fingers as he tightened his grip. He rubbed at the tip of Stiles’ pinky between his thumb and forefinger. That was always the first nail to go into his mouth when he was nervous about something. It looked pretty ragged. “So. Game plan?”

Strategy was always a good way for them to communicate. They’d been on the same lacrosse team throughout most of elementary school, and before they’d been truly close, they’d mostly just talked about their coach’s tactical formations: Stiles played offense and Scott played defense. They’d hashed out logistics in their own simplified terms, working on understanding the nuances of the game, trying to one up each other while they passed the ball back and forth for hours by the swingset in Stiles' backyard, or by the shed in Scott's. Then Stiles’ mom got diagnosed, and Scott’s dad walked out on him and his mom. And for a while after that, for the sake of both their sanities their conversations had erred on the side of impersonal, ricocheting from sports statistics into feelings only when they felt they couldn’t stand it anymore. Kids always felt things they couldn’t ignore, after all. But game plans and determining courses of action were always the most effective ways for them both to organize their minds out loud and to each other. It was just how they were.

Recognizing the question for what it was, Stiles half-smiled before looking down at his lap with a furrowed brow. “Honestly, I was thinking just tilt our heads to the right and hope for the best.” He shrugged, looking at Scott's mouth for a moment. “I guess the real question is, are we feeling French?”

Scott felt his face heat up. His tawny skin didn’t show the blush at full intensity but he could still feel the way his embarrassment crept up beneath his cheeks and forehead. He thought he felt pretty American at the moment, but the competitive part of him didn’t like the way Stiles seemed to be trying to hide his smirk with a ducked head. He was sure Stiles' amusement was at his own expense. With firm resolve, he murmured, “Madame Hayden vou-dray cue noos so-yons fran-see.”

Stiles looked at him confused for a moment before asking, “do you mean, _Madame Hayden_ _voudrait que nous soyons français_?” He smiled at Scott sweetly. “I think she’d appreciate us being French, too. And I think when we’re done here, we really should work on our French homework before getting back to that project. You need some serious practice.”

He huffed and shoved at Stiles' shoulder. He bounced back laughing. “Okay, whatever. So, heads to the right. French.” His face still felt a little hot at the thought. “So where do we put our hands?”

Without missing a beat, Stiles responded, “put yours here.” With quick, determined motions, he arranged Scott's hands, one to Stiles' right cheek and the other on his left hip. “And I’ll put mine here.” One hand to the side of Scott's neck and the other to his chest, right over his heart.

 

He concentrated on the softness of Stiles' cheek under his hand, and knew Stiles could probably feel his heart speed up underneath his own hand. He took a deep breath. “Okay.”

Stiles nodded and looked down at his mouth once more, tilting his head to the right as discussed. He moved forward, closing the distance by half before closing his eyes and waiting. Scott steeled himself before following suit.

For the split second before their lips met, Scott pictured the way they could look together. They could look a little like the final moments of the ends of the old movies his mom watched on the Turner Classic Movie channel. He’d never been overly familiar with such movies, having only seen bits and pieces while tucking a blanket off the back of the couch over his mom when she inevitably fell asleep to the sounds of other peoples’ romances every Friday night. But he thought about how it could feel to kiss someone he’d spent half his life loving, how it could look like black and white but then a kiss could turn everything to technicolor. Those stupid movies always used to make his mom cry before the divorce was finalized.

Then his lips actually met Stiles’, and at first, it felt dry and actually kind of awkward. Scott could feel Stiles breathing out through his nose against Scott's cheek, and his lips felt kind of warm, but also pretty chapped. He thought about his ragged pinky nail and the fact that it was probably a good thing that he didn’t use chapstick since he would end up smearing it all over with his nervous tics anyway. And then Stiles grunted with impatience and Scott felt him readjust their positions in small, subtle movements, clutching at the front of Scott's shirt with his hand and bringing their heads that much closer. He matched Stiles when he parted his lips, and it all got a little wetter after that. French, indeed.

Stiles directed the way they moved together, pulling back and pushing together again, sliding his thumb against the pulse point in his neck. He managed to lead Scott through and hold himself firmly, yet delicately against him at the same time.

When they parted, leaning back from each other, his first thought was, _oh. Well, crap_.

Stiles blinked his eyes open and stared at Scott for a moment before muttering to himself, “Whoa. Nice.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grinned at Scott, sitting back a little further on the bed to gift him with his personal space back. “Not bad for a first kiss, right, Scotty?” He said, smugly. He seemed at ease now that he’d gotten what he wanted. Scott felt a little wary and confused, but then again pretty good himself. Stiles wasn’t immediately acting different from his usual self and there didn’t seem to be any insurmountable weirdness between them. New, yet kind of normal in its own way. Stiles was as comfortable in Scott's bed as he was in his own, as always, and Scott felt just about ready to grab his backpack from the living room to get back to the homework they’d been ignoring for the past hour. The only real difference was that now he knew what Stiles' tongue in his mouth felt like.

“Guess we can put French aside for today, and work on that project again, huh?” Stiles raised his hand to his mouth and nibbled at what was left of the tip of his pinky nail.

Without thinking, Scott made a grab for his hand and pulled it away from his face. For a second, he thought that he might hold on, tangle their fingers again, rub their sweaty palms together and just hold Stiles' hand for a little while they sat in his bed. Then he wondered about what made Stiles nervous in the first place, if something had shifted in him somehow. Homework would probably be a less complicated option for the rest of this particular afternoon. He guessed they’d done enough today.

He placed Stiles' hand back onto his own lap before getting off the bed. “I’m gonna go grab our backpacks. Stay here or we’re just gonna end up on the Wii again.”

Stiles relaxed back into the pillows by the headboard. “I’ll stay here if I can have some of your cheetos.”

Scott huffed out an annoyed little sound before relenting. “Fine, it’s not like you don’t know where they are, anyway.”

He darted into the hallway and thought to himself about how Stiles knew he’d hidden skittles and cheetos around his room. And how he knew that Scott would eventually relent to a kiss if he pushed the right buttons hard enough, and for long enough. Something definitely shifted, almost imperceptible in its subtleness, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. It seemed kind of scary that Stiles could probably make his life better just by being in it. By staying in it, in whatever capacity. He didn’t know what this whole thing meant for them, or if he felt anything different when all was said and done. But he was sure that if they set about planning, they could have it all figured out and be on the same page in minutes. They always had before. Nothing that basic had changed, and it felt like everything was still theirs to strategize, as long as they stuck together.

But for now, they had a group project they really had to get through. Scott shoved the scattered papers in the living room into his backpack, grabbed Stiles’ bag, and headed back to his room. If they had enough time after that, they could get in a couple rounds of Super Smash Bros., and then maybe they’d get to practice a little bit more French before dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> I took some liberties with their course work as I'm pretty sure neither of them have taken French, but it was kind of fun to picture Dylan O'Brien nailing the pronunciation. And in this story, they met around the third grade. I have no idea if they have lacrosse for kids that young, but oh well, in this story they do! 
> 
> I started writing this over a month ago and only decided to finish it today. Felt a little self-conscious about the whole thing, but ultimately I think since it was fun to write, there will probably be someone out there that finds it fun to read. So here I am, sharing it. If you've meandered into the end notes, thanks for reading! And if you like it, let me know!


End file.
